My father. My father was tall, like me. Dark-haired. Thin. He wore a mustache, well and often, and tanned easily. I loved his hands, always shaking slightly because of medication he took to balance the madness that sometimes danced in his head. I loved his smile, his laugh like bare feet hanging off a dock in summer.

He would have been 52 on April 5th, just two Saturdays ago.

He always made me eat all of my peas. I didn’t like that, because at the time, I didn’t like peas. I loved home-made huckleberry pancakes in the morning on our weekend visits. I loved being a “Daddy’s Girl.” I swore I knew him best, swore I loved him best. Swore I would behave the best whenever I was in his presence, which always proved more difficult than I had initially imagined.

When I was twelve going on thirteen I found myself thinking about my wedding day more often than an almost thirteen year-old should. Not about the flowers, the dress, or even the man standing beside me, as I had yet to even kiss a boy.

I found myself wondering about my walk down the aisle, and who would be standing next to me. I used to wonder what I would do with two dads on my wedding day. My mom had chosen Greg for her second husband, and he was wonderful–amazing even–and he loved us. We loved him, too.

Dad was still here then, and I wondered. I used to think it would be complicated, two dads walking one daughter down the aisle, and that someone would inevitably get their feelings hurt and I didn’t want to be the one doing the hurting. I used to think I would have to choose. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than choosing. I would have given so much to be faced with that dilemma this past September. Turns out not having a choice is worse.

The missing him is always strongest in April, and around holidays. It makes sense, doesn’t it? At least logically. I will always miss him most when our family gathers from their respective busy-ness throughout the rest of the year, and the room is filled with faces that look and talk like his, with heads and hearts that remember like his. His family. My family.

I will always miss him most on April 5th and April 15th. Every year I think it will get lighter, the weight in my chest that rises as the start of April approaches. For the past thirteen years it hasn’t. This marks the first April wherein he has officially been gone longer than he was here, with me anyway. I was twelve, almost thirteen, when he was swallowed by a river too cold to let him emerge unscathed. I will be 26 in June.

My dad was the solitary boy among a family of five girls, and for as long as I can remember first taking notice of their unique and dynamic personalities, and their familial solidarity, their imperfect and yet still steadfast strength, his sisters have put me at ease. I look forward to seeing my aunts always; I look forward to talking with them and hearing story-telling akin to such holiday familial gatherings. Story-telling with hand gestures, of course.

They remind me to keep breathing, that life after loss goes on painfully, but peacefully, and eventually, triumphantly, too. They remind me to keep laughing and living, to collect my life’s stories like I would obsessively collect anything else.

My family, like so many families, knows quite well how fleeting time is, knows that our bliss and our sorrow, both are finite. Our days and years numbered in far too small of increments to be acknowledged without the smallest bit of disdain.

My family reminds me to hold the past close, for better or for worse, to frame and proudly display my peace, my sorrow, my joy, my love, because all of that, for better and for worse, comprises me.

I am my father’s daughter.

And today, on the anniversary of his death thirteen years ago, I miss him.